Separate Column Sorting

[Guest]

Dear all,

I've a table consisting three groups of data. Columns A,B,C & D is the first
group; columns E,F,G & H is the second and....so forth for the third. Then I
filled in numbers into the first group in random order, such as:

12 25 7 33
8 15 11 19
10 4 22 18

After I filled in the numbers, can I sort those numbers from A1.... in
ascending or descending order(over and down)? If yes, how to do it? Please
kindly advise.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Blue Hornet]

In order to expedite a response, what results do you expect from the
sort you're "sort of" describing? It's not clear.

 

[Guest]

Hi Blue Hornet

After sorting, I want the result as:

4 7 8 10
11 12 15 18
19 22 25 33

Thanks.

 

[Blue Hornet]

Okay; this is clear.

What you'll want to do is select the values in Row 1 that you want to
sort, then "Data / Sort" and click the "Options" button in the dialog
box. You want to "Sort by Row" (I think--I'm not at Excel right now).
Back at the dialog box you'll select the row to sort.

Then do the same operation for each of the following rows.

Finally, you'll come back again and do a sort by each column. Finally,
you'll have a sorted matrix with lower values at top right, higher ones
at bottom right. I'm sure there will be a much more elegant way to
arrive at this arrangement using worksheet functions and no physical
sorting of the data (which I would not normally perform, as the order
the data is received and recorded usually has significance). But this
should get you where you say you want to be.